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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25309105">A Life Alight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757'>vinnie2757</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Regency, Explicit Language, F/M, Non graphic violence, Slow Burn, cid has a lot of feelings and only a couple of them are good, listen its regency we're getting dances and tea, shera is too bold for her own good but not bold enough, terrible flirting, theres a lot of scandal and i love it</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 01:57:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>19,688</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25309105</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the height of the Midgar season, a perfect time to dance and drink tea and meet a suitor. Shera knows she should care about this, but five years ago, a terrible tragedy at the the Nibelheim Manor cost her her sister, and thoughts of marriage and going to Midgar at all are very far from her mind. But a rumour that he sister has been spotted, in the gated garden where the elite's children play, has her going to the season, just to see if there's any truth to it.</p><p>And if she meets a dashing, if incredibly rude, Captain on the way, well, that's just what happens.</p><p>[Cid/Shera, Regency AU]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cid Highwind/Shera, background cloud/tifa, background vincent/lucrecia - Relationship, background zack/aerith - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. An Unexpected Meeting</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A rewrite because the first one absolutely blew. I adore this au, and I have Loor to thank for it.</p><p>I hope you enjoy this incredibly niche interest, lovelies~!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s a dark night, full of storm; thunder and lightning, and rain that pelts you from the heavens, as if the Planet itself has a particularly nasty vendetta against you. Cid had been south of home, talking to a few of the miners about that awful collapse, and trying to work out a way of – well, he doesn’t know what he plans to do with it, but his father’s estate was making money, and it seemed a shame to let skilled workers fall into disgrace because of that brat across the sea, down in Midgar, waving his chequebook about like it was a flag of victory.</p><p>So he’s a long way from shelter, and a longer way from home when the rain starts, and by the time he has enough of it, he can’t possibly get any wetter, so he may as well just continue on his route.</p><p>Which is, he reflects later, after he’s bathed and scrubbed the blood from under his nails and begged the maids to just please try and get his breeches clean, they’re his best riding pair, is probably the best decision he could have made.</p><p>He stumbles across them halfway through the night, and at first glance, in the flash of lightning turning the sky gold, he thinks they’re corpses. His chocobo whines, stamps its feet, and he has to pull the reins hard to keep it from flapping about. He pulls it around, gets close, watches them for a second.</p><p>Then the man stirs, just enough to tell Cid that they’re <em>alive</em>, and then he doesn’t think about it. He gets them up, gets the girl – woman, she’s fully-grown, even if she’s a small, svelte creature – astride the chocobo, and it’s not going to be comfortable, they’re not designed for multiple riders, but he needs her safe, her skin blistered and her hair gone, scalp trickling blood in the rain down her face.</p><p>‘Fuck,’ he breathes, and carefully hauls the man to his feet, and then across his shoulders.</p><p>It’s going to exhaust him, but he’s doing what’s right. It’s all he can do. The man coughs twice, vomits, and goes slack. Cid looks at his arm as he walks, and the fingers are going an ugly colour. There’s nothing he can do at the moment, except walk. The chocobo whines, but he just tugs the reins and keeps walking.</p><p>He has no way of sending a message, but his mother is waiting for him all the same, aware in that way she has of when she’s needed.</p><p>She takes one look at them, in the pre-dawn light, and ushers them inside.</p><p>Cid does what he can to help her, but his mother is – well, she is a force to be reckoned with at the best of times, and this is not one of those times. He does his best to help, but there’s little he can do; medicine was never his strong suit, and he’s had so little interest in picking up any knowledge his mother had given him that all he can do is use his weight to hold the man down as she ties a tourniquet tight about his left forearm and lines her saw up.</p><p>‘It’s the only choice,’ she says, ‘there’s no way of bringing it back. I’m so sorry.’</p><p>Cid’s arms ache with the effort of keeping the man still, and he feels both too old and too young for this, soaked through with blood and rain and stinking of the burnt flesh he’d held across his shoulders.</p><p>After, he helps his mother take the man to one of the many empty bedrooms in the manor, and they set a maid to watch over him, and then they stand in the hall and look at each other. The woman had been taken aside on arrival by the maids, cleaned and tidied as best they could, salve and bandages applied to her burns, and the report from them said that the worst of it had been the superficial at best.</p><p>‘I wonder who they are,’ Cid says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.</p><p>‘We’ll find out when they wake,’ his mother replies, and wipes her hands on her skirt, which is stained with blood and burnt flesh. ‘For now, go and bathe, and try to rest. You did – you did really well, Cid, to bring them here.’</p><p>‘I couldn’t leave them. The creatures out there, they’d have been dead before sun-up.’</p><p>His mother nods, and runs her fingertips across her hairline, brushing stray hairs back into the swept-back knot she’d tied it into before starting her impromptu operation. She looks tired, and Cid feels bad for waking her.</p><p>‘I had not retired,’ his mother tells him, in that way that Highwind women – no, no, Catherine was a Fratley first, and she’ll be a Fratley until she dies, and Ricard had been lucky to have her for the time he did, Cid thinks, and has few fond memories of his father – have, where they read your mind without having looked into it at all. ‘I was waiting for you to return. The sound of the storm was – well, I thought it best to wait for you.’</p><p>She gestures, and they begin to walk, steps echoing in the empty, tiled corridors, towards their wing of the estate.</p><p>‘Corel is a tragedy,’ Cid says, and itches at his neck. ‘So many good men lost their lives, and so many more are lost. I would help them, if I knew how. But we have no mining opportunities here in Deist, and I doubt they know how to dig for bones.’</p><p>Catherine hums, and folds her hands behind her back. She’s regal, because she was taught well, but she’s unrefined, and Cid is honoured to have taken that loose-limbed sharpness from her, and not the rod that had been stuck so firmly into his father’s spine as to be bone itself.</p><p>‘We will find something,’ she says, ‘even if it is only to move the mines further out. That boy has a lot to answer for.’</p><p>‘He will,’ Cid hums. ‘There was a lot of talk of – disquiet. In Midgar, long before the mine collapsed. I couldn’t say whether there will be murder, but there will likely be slander in the papers. Next time I travel that way, I’ll get some, just to see what the rumours are.’</p><p>Catherine hums again.</p><p>‘His father will quell a lot of it,’ she says, with the quiet tone of someone too used to seeing rich men pay their way out of scandal.</p><p>Planet knows her husband had done his best to do so not six weeks after their wedding. He’d married down, of course, refusing the bride his father had bequeathed him to and instead marrying a <em>Fratley</em> of all breeds. Cid will go to his grave never understanding his father’s attraction to his mother, so diametrically opposed to him in all ways, a free, wild spirit, too intelligent and capable by herself to be subservient to a <em>Highwind</em>. It had been a scandal, and Cid is sure his father died resenting that his only son and his one heir had all but renounced the family name by the time he was seven. It is not to say that Cid did not – or does not – love his father, but he was an unlikeable man, so caught up in the expectations of his station that he had nothing but order and command for his son. Catherine would say that she had had the same, and that Ricard cared, but had no idea how to show it. Cid finds it difficult to reciprocate that supposed care, given that he was not spared the rod.</p><p>Well, regardless.</p><p>‘I’m sure he will,’ Cid says, ‘though I’ve heard scandal is not something strange to Midgar anyway. They practically deal in it, the way you hear them tell the stories. The latest has been about a woman carrying on with another man whilst married, and some horrid rumours have been flying around about her – ‘</p><p>He stops, both walking and talking, and looks at the wall. His mother raises an eyebrow, blue eyes bright.</p><p>‘Cid?’ she asks, because for all Cid is young, he is not stupid, and neither is his mother.</p><p>He looks back down the corridor, and his brow furrows.</p><p>‘We,’ he starts, ‘I did – I found them in the Nibel area, not far north of Nibelheim.’</p><p>Catherine smiles, slow and sad, and crosses the few feet to where her son stands, bloodied and damp, stinking of wet chocobo and soot. She touches his cheek, gently, because Cid is twenty now, full-grown and long past the need for comfort from his mother.</p><p>‘We will find out when they wake,’ she says, ‘for now, the maids will draw you a bath, and you have travelled far enough to need sleep. Worrying about it will serve you no pleasure, and only cause you further concern. Sleep, darling, and we will think of it on the morrow.’</p><p>He swallows, and looks at her, and then with a sigh, he nods once.</p><p>‘Fine,’ he says, ‘I just – they’ll live?’</p><p>‘If they have the will,’ she says, ‘they have the best burn salves, and they will have the best care, and beyond that, it is up to them. But they escaped whatever burnt them, and that says many things, not least their want of survival.’</p><p>Cid nods, and sighs again.</p><p>‘Goodnight,’ he says, and she pats his cheek before letting him go.</p>
<hr/><p>In Mideel, some five years later, Shera Crescent wakes to the sound of rain outside her window. This in itself is not unusual. There has been plenty of rain lately, given that it is the season for rain here. The sun peeks between gaps in the clouds, but it is grey and weak, and she wonders why she slept so late. It is not like her to sleep late, but she hadn’t slept well, terrible dreams and even worse nightmares.</p><p>For a few long moments, she lies there and watches the dappling grey sun struggling to illuminate the peaks and troughs of the ceiling moulding before rubbing her hands over her face to try and alleviate the tightness of having cried.</p><p>‘You are grown,’ she tells herself, though she is far from being able to call herself fully-grown, barely twenty, and she feels the salt in her throat, bitter and burning, a sign that she needs to – to –</p><p>Well, truth be told, she is not sure what it means she needs to do.</p><p>The dreams had been horrible, and she goes through her ablutions in an automatic, foggy sort of way, with little to no thought spared to her actions, all of them occupied with the newspaper she had seen yesterday, courtesy of Mr and Mrs Wright, coming from Kalm as they do every year. She had stared at the print, and though her fingers had ached, she had not clenched her fists about the paper, because it was not hers, and they were dear enough to warrant care. Though there were no pictures attached, because there were rarely, if ever, pictures in newspapers, the description of her sister had been vivid enough that she had <em>no doubt</em> of her survival. Her mother had been overcome with sadness at the article, and her father’s jaw had been tight, but Shera had absorbed every word, every line of that article. She had read it twice over and she had pictured it, this errant account of, by all other accounts, a ghost.</p><p>Her sister was dead, and had been dead for five years, and there was nothing to contradict it, except, perhaps, this terrible, terrible print.</p><p>Dressed, she smooths down the front of her gown, and then hikes it to her knees to go downstairs without tripping, woozy still with the heaviness of poor sleep, and clumsy enough with all her faculties.</p><p>‘Ah, Shera,’ says Mrs Wright, coming across the hall from the parlour, looking vibrant and jolly with her hair all neatly pinned and her dress beautifully embroidered; a gift, she is sure, from Mr Wright, who had likely done something incredibly foolish to warrant such an apology. ‘You return to us! It’s nearly lunchtime!’</p><p>Shera, who has known Mrs Wright from her infancy, snorts in an incredibly unladylike way, and waves a hand.</p><p>‘Teasing is incredibly rude,’ she says, imperious, and then smiles, blistering and wide. ‘Good morning to you, too. I – I have thought about your offer.’</p><p>For a moment, Mrs Wright is confused, as one would be, to have an offer accepted so early in the morning. Then she recalls the offer made, and smiles back.</p><p>‘You have?’ she asks, ‘and what do you say?’</p><p>Shera chews the inside of her lip for a second, takes a deep breath, and nods thrice in quick succession.</p><p>‘I should like to accept. I – I have thought about it, and you are right. I am unlikely to meet a husband here, or in Mideel proper, and I should – I think it is time I left my parents’ care, and – established my own household.’</p><p>Mrs Wright lets it sink in for a long moment, her eyebrow quirked and her lips biting back a smile. Shera has, for the entirety of her life, displayed no interest in marrying, or any interest in all that accompanies marriage, and so the turnaround is unexpected. Bewildering, even.</p><p>‘Shera,’ she says, because she is clearly at a loose end. ‘I am glad you have changed your mind, but I worry – this hasn’t come about because of the newspaper, has it?’</p><p>Shera answers too fast. ‘Not at all,’ she says, entirely too quickly, words tumbling over themselves. ‘No, no, she is dead and that is all there is to it. If somehow she survived the fire, there would be no reason for her to have not returned home, or, at the very least, to have written a letter. No, no, it is nothing to do with that. Well, I suppose it has, in that it has made me aware that I still have my own life to live. In a few years, I will be older than she was, and I have little to show for it. An education, certainly, but no – no husband, no house. No children.’</p><p>‘And are they so very important?’ Mrs Wright asks, and Shera feels her throat tighten with salt and her eyes itch.</p><p>Her smile this time is shaky, but she forces it to stay.</p><p>‘There is little else,’ she says, ‘this house has not been happy for five years, and another five will not change that. There is more education to be had in Midgar, certainly! I have read all the books I can read here, and there are always new things to learn there, which of course I should like to do, but I will – I have made my mind up, Mrs Wright. I shall attend Midgar with you, for the season, and I shall – I shall find my future there, whatever it may be.’</p><p>Mrs Wright watches her for a moment, studies her mettle, and then crosses the hallway to embrace the foolish girl.</p><p>‘You needn’t lie,’ she whispers, as Shera buries her face in Mrs Wright’s shoulder and breathes deeper than a grown woman should. ‘If there is anything to find, it will be found. But you cannot let it rule your choices.’</p><p>This, Shera feels, is bordering on rich, coming from a woman whose own griefs have led to her inviting a daughter not her own to the season. But she was raised with manners, and so says nothing, even if there were something to say.</p><p>When they part, Mrs Wright ushers her to the drawing room, where her mother still sits with her tea, and where some cakes and fruits might remain, though, by her own admittance, Mr Wright had such an appetite that Shera better attend quickly, lest it be gone, and she herself would go to find said husband to arrange their travels.</p><p>Mrs Crescent sits in her usual chair, book in one hand, the other holding a fork that’s turned a piece of honey cake into crumbs, and her eyes barely flick up to acknowledge Shera as she enters.</p><p>‘You’re going,’ she says, and Shera nods, takes the vacant seat next to her, helping herself to tea from the pot and a brioche roll from the plate.</p><p>‘I have run out of excuses not to,’ she says, ‘I should have gone to Midgar years ago, and I suppose I should be married by now, have a household and a child and a – a – I suppose I always thought I would be out with her, that she would be making introductions for me, and that I would be able to – stay close, that she could give me advice and that we would still make traps for the boys that got too close.’</p><p> Her mother smiles, and it’s a sad smile, but it is obviously the expectation that she had had herself.</p><p>‘Yes,’ she says, because she would be foolish to say anything else. ‘I will admit, we were reluctant to let you go.’</p><p>Shera had turned sixteen not months after that ghastly business with her sister, and there had been no body to bury, and it had not been a situation any of them had wished her to enter, and so she hadn’t. Her refusal had taken root and become such an immovable thing that by the time her parents had considered it appropriate, and indeed necessary, for Shera to be out in society, Shera had teared up at the thought of being made to leave the safety of harmless, out-of-the-way, familiar Mideel and enter the city that had gotten her sister killed.</p><p>For it had killed her, and this Shera would remain adamant. Her mother and father, for all their intelligence, for all their deep thoughts and considered air, had convinced themselves that it had been a terrible accident, that fire, but Shera was not so convinced. Perhaps, in her grief, she had read too many novels. Perhaps, indeed, she had been so fanciful as to concoct a conspiracy, but she remained sure of it. Midgar, with its wretched peoples and its terrible air, had fashioned the situation that had caused her sister to die. The report called the fire an accident, and rumour had declared it a just comeuppance for a woman having an affair, divine retribution from the Planet for the ugliness in her heart, and dared insinuate that the fire had been started as a result of that affair, a candle knocked over by an over-eager embrace, or a fireplace left unattended through passion, and Shera had felt sick to think of it. That the Planet could be so cruel to a woman who had dedicated her life to trying to help the people on it, it settled poorly in her heart.</p><p>Would she, she’d often wonder, when she lay there weeping for terrible dreams of her sister’s fate, would she too meet a man that she loved, only to become sworn to another, less suited man? Would she too die at the hands of a fate she could not control, just because her heart had been taken?</p><p> But Shera is the blood of a scientist, a doctor, a man dedicated to bettering the health and wellness of others, without relying on a divine power that she cannot find evidence of, and so she does not believe that fate can take her hand.</p><p>Which is a fine way of saying that she is scared of it, of that same fate she cannot escape.</p><p>These thoughts, jumbled as they are, are for another day, another sleepless night, far away from hot tea and fresh baked goods, and so she puts them safely aside.</p><p>‘I know,’ Shera nods, ‘and I was glad of it. But now I – I am twenty now, and old enough to be sensible about these things. There is no one left for me to meet here, if I am meant to meet anyone at all.’</p><p>Her mother looks sad, but she has looked sad for a long while now.</p><p>‘Mr and Mrs Wright will look after you,’ she says, and pokes her fork into the crumbs on her plate a few more times. ‘They took good care of your sister, when she first attended Midgar. You are every bit as headstrong as she was, and so I implore you to do what she didn’t, and <em>listen</em> to them.’</p><p> Shera promises to do as such, and shoves the last of the roll in her mouth, so that she doesn’t have to say anything further.</p><p>‘You’d best begin to pack,’ her mother says, turning her gaze back to her book, and Shera sees the tearful crease of her mouth, so familiar to her own jaws. ‘They will wish to return to Midgar as soon as they are able.’</p><p>Shera nods, and takes her leave, already debating how many gowns she could fit in her trunk compared to books.</p>
<hr/><p>They arrive in Kalm late in the evening, and so Mrs Wright suggests that Shera bathe and go straight to bed, so that they might attend Midgar in the morning, and find her some new books and get a suitable gown made. Shera had expressed concern that her dresses would not be appropriate for a dance, being plain and practical, and Mr Wright had assured that he would pay for any dresses that needed to be made. Shera is sure that he did not mean it as such, but it sounded awfully like an attempt to buy her compliance in Midgar, where obviously her sister had had none.</p><p>It is a strange thing, to have such a large hole in your heart, filled with bitterness and sadness and anger, and she lies in a strange bed staring at a strange ceiling and smelling of strange soap, and she thinks on the hole in her heart. She thinks on how it’s where her sister had been, and how it would likely never fill again, and she thinks on how the fear of death, how the fear of loss that her mother had experienced, and Shera herself having been so young when it happened, how that had closed the walls of her life tight about her. Follow the rules, she’d learnt, and you will stay safe. This, she supposed, made her pliable, purchasable, and if Mr Wright bought her, she would be honour-bound to listen, thanks to his generosity. Her mother had called her as headstrong as her sister, and she was, but she was confined by the walls of her fear, and unable to action it. Her sister had been the opposite, a wild thing, headstrong and wilful and she would not have heeded any concerns of society, and that was something Shera had always admired about her. When she was young, so young as to not have been able to be called anything else, her mother had said that common sense had skipped a generation and had gone straight to Shera, giving her a double-dose of anxiety and fretting, making her an over-thinker and a deliberator, instead of a doer, as her sister was. Fearless, to the point of stupidity, her father would say, when she came home with scraped knees and a black eye from a squabble with a boy in the village. She had mellowed as she grew older, and books and learning and science, those had become important enough to her to stop the worst of her hare-brained schemes.</p><p>‘But that was the most hare-brained of all,’ Shera breathes, and tries not to cry.</p>
<hr/><p>In the morning, she resolves to – to – to <em>not</em> go looking for her, or for any sign of her. She promises herself, in the mirror as she washes her face, that she will let her matter drop. It will hurt for the rest of her life, but her sister is dead, and trying to dig up her ghost, no matter what some silly newspaper says about her having been spotted in the gated square where the elite’s children play, no matter what that says, she is <em>dead</em>.</p><p>‘You won’t have time,’ she tells herself, intending fully to book her days with excursions with Mrs Wright, and any acquaintances she might make, and to attend lectures in the town hall, and to learn as much as she could.</p><p>If she was busy from dawn to dusk, she should have no time left to seek out rumours of her sister.</p><p>Which is, she supposes, how it should be.</p><p>Mrs Wright is waiting for her, Mr Wright having returned to work at the Mythril mine some ways south, and they have a small breakfast before getting into the carriage to go into Midgar proper.</p><p>‘Have you ever been?’ Mrs Wright asks, and Shera shakes her head, looks out of the window at the city looming large and bright above them.</p><p>‘I haven’t. My sister used to write me letters, and she included sketches, but they do it no justice.’</p><p>‘It is a busy place,’ Mrs Wright says, ‘very different to Mideel. You’ll adjust to it soon enough, don’t fret, but it will be overwhelming.’</p><p>Overwhelming is not the word Shera would have used to describe the place, but she supposes she hasn’t read enough books to have a better fit.</p><p>Chaos, maybe.</p><p>Their first stop is the tailors, so that Shera can be fitted for a dress in a suitably-priced muslin, less than ten Gil a yard, which Mrs Wright assures her is a bargain for such a pretty fabric as she’d chosen, sprigged and the colour of honey. It looks pretty enough in the pattern drawing, and she thinks that if she is able to braid her hair appropriately, she might almost pass as attractive.</p><p>She has always been plain, and she has been content with that. But she must make an impression upon Mr and Mrs Wright as to the honesty of her attendance here, and so she must try to make herself attractive. Pretty, even, if she could ever be so bold.</p><p>‘You will look lovely,’ Mrs Wright assures her, hand on her arm to help her down from the stool. ‘You have a wonderful complexion, and if you kept your chin up, one might almost think you an elite.’</p><p>Given what the elite did, Shera is not sure this is a compliment. She takes it as one, though, because it’s what’s right.</p><p>‘Where to now?’ she asks, and Mrs Wright leads them outside, back into the hustle and bustle.</p><p>Mrs Wright considers it for a moment.</p><p>‘Let us go to the bookkeeper’s alley,’ she says, ‘there you can find some new books, and then perhaps to tea?’</p><p>‘That sounds wonderful.’</p><p>So that is what they do. Mrs Wright leads Shera through some winding streets, telling her all about the places they pass; a large wall, aptly named the Wall, where a private ball is held in honour of the elite, which everyone with an address is invited to; the assembly rooms, where they will be attending a dance later in the week; several tea rooms and the town hall where lectures are held daily.</p><p>‘You will be able to attend most,’ Mrs Wright says, and then hesitates for a moment. ‘You do not have to attend them, but you are aware that – ‘</p><p>‘My brother-in-law still teaches, yes,’ Shera nods. ‘I – I am not sure whether I wish to see him.’</p><p>She knows that she should; though he is a vile, horrible man, and had been so terribly wrong for her sister, she bears him no immediate ill will. He had not killed her sister, his wife, after all. But she does not want to see him, for she knows he is responsible for so much of the unhappiness that had claimed her spirit long before the fire claimed her skin.</p><p>‘You have plenty of time to decide,’ Mrs Wright assures her, with a gentle squeeze of her arm. ‘Come, we are not far.’</p><p>The bookkeeper’s alley is a quiet, peaceful place. There are few bodies on the street, and those that are either hold books to their noses, or their noses to the glass of the shop windows. Despite being just a turn off of the main thoroughfare of the city, there is little sound here, most of it drowned out by the high walls of the shop fronts, and the cobbles are clean and white.</p><p>‘The shops may be a little stuffy,’ Mrs Wright says, ‘so I might wait outside, if that is agreeable to you.’</p><p>‘Yes,’ Shera says, ‘of course, I shouldn’t like you to fall ill.’</p><p>So it is settled; Shera shall go into the shops, and Mrs Wright shall wait outside, perusing the windows.</p><p>It is in the third shop that she finds a book on the many uses of the newly discovered medicinal potions, and she stands there thumbing through it, completely absorbed. Though it is not her sister’s name on the cover, but her brother-in-law’s, she recognises her sister’s writing, the way she structured sentences, the odd little quirks. He hadn’t even bothered to rewrite her documents, some of which she had sent to Shera, so excited to share her discoveries, even though she knew her sister had absolutely no idea what most of the words meant.</p><p>She runs her fingers over a hand-drawn diagram in the book, and she smiles, almost.</p><p>‘Miss,’ says a man that thuds into the edge of her universe, his elbow on the bookshelf and close enough for her to smell his breath, ‘don’t you think that book’s a little advanced?’</p><p>She snorts, and turns the page. ‘I do not speak to strangers, sir, so if you please.’</p><p>She indicates with her hand, politely, that his company is not desired. For a second, the man hesitates, and then his shoulders roll and he’s half a step closer. Shera freezes, and stares at the page in front of her, her heart a loud rabbit-kick against her ribs.</p><p>‘Now, Miss,’ the man says, and she can smell sherry. ‘That ain’t so polite, now, is it? I have a lot of books I think you’d like. You should come see ‘em, they have lots of pictures.’</p><p>She combs a strand of hair behind her ear and does her best to twist away, but the man is very close and she’s already in the corner of an aisle. The book is not a very effective defence, but it’s a barrier enough.</p><p>‘Sir,’ she says again.</p><p>‘Oi, mate, I’m certain I heard her tell you to fuck off.’</p><p>She doesn’t know what shocks her most; the sudden yanking of the man from her view, or the profanity. The man yanks himself from the new arrival’s grip on his collar, and dusts himself down.</p><p>‘I do apologise, <em>Captain</em>, I wasn’t aware she was accounted for. Apologies for treading on your toes. Should have known you like to wed down like your old man.’</p><p>The punch comes out of nowhere, and Shera can’t help the cry that comes out of her throat.</p><p>‘Out!’ the bookkeeper roars, and throws all three of them out, even though Shera had had nothing to do with it.</p><p>Outside, the man who’d spoken to her, now bloody-nosed and with the quick bloom of a black eye, spits on the ground and swaggers off down the street.</p><p>‘Fucking prick,’ the Captain, so he’d been addressed, snorts, and thumbs the corner of his mouth, before turning to Shera. ‘I’m sorry, Miss.’</p><p>Shera blinks at him, feeling very – very – well, she hadn’t expected to need saving, and she hadn’t expected said saviour to be <em>handsome</em> either.</p><p>‘Uh,’ she says, helpfully.</p><p>‘You got a free book, at least,’ the Captain says, and gestures at the book, still in her hands.</p><p>She blinks at him some more, and then looks at her hands, and the book.</p><p>‘Oh!’ she exclaims, ‘oh no, I should – I should return it!’</p><p>The Captain laughs, and lays a hand across the book, his fingertips brushing hers.</p><p>‘Don’t,’ he says, ‘that keeper’s an absolute arsehole, and he won’t miss one book, even if it is one by that fucking moron.’</p><p>‘But it’s <em>stealing</em>, sir!’ she whispers, harried, and doesn’t really process that he’s got enough understanding of who Hojo is to know he’s a – as he says – fucking moron.</p><p>He laughs again, and Shera can’t look away from his eyes, bluer than any midsummer sky she’d ever seen, and so warm, watching her with an intensity she can’t name.</p><p>‘Then be a criminal,’ he whispers back, just as conspiratorial, and then hums. ‘Are you alright?’</p><p>She takes a breath, looking at the way his blond hair sits at his temples, the faint hint of summer freckles across his nose, the strength of his jaw and sharpness of his cheekbones, his eyes still so warm.</p><p>‘Yes,’ she says, with a nod. ‘I believe so, thank you.’</p><p>His smile is softer this time, and he opens his mouth, only to be interrupted by Mrs Wright calling her name.</p><p>‘Shera! Shera, darling, are you alright?’</p><p>She blinks and makes a choking noise in her throat before managing to get out, ‘yes, I’m fine!’</p><p>‘Ah, fuck, excuse me,’ the Captain says, ‘no introductions, and all. Good day, Miss.’</p><p>Before she can say anything, he’s disappeared off down the street, ducking into an alleyway she hadn’t known was there, and Mrs Wright has taken his place.</p><p>‘Shera, oh goodness, I hope those men weren’t rude. Talking without introductions! They can be so improper these days!’</p><p>‘No, no,’ Shera assures her, ‘no it was – it was fine.’</p><p>She looks back down the street, but there’s no sign of the Captain, should that be his title. She looks back at the book in her hands, and her fingers tingle. Mrs Wright takes her arm again, and they walk. As they do, Mrs Wright talks about how she’d seen the man with the bloody nose, and how so many young men these days are arrogant and aggressive, and how the military service is so short these days, and yet they are worse for it, and Shera doesn’t really listen. She thinks about the Captain with the midsummer sky eyes and the smile like he was thinking of something incredibly naughty, and she thinks of how that rude man, the first one, he’d talked of marriage, of being wed down, and she wonders if that is just the Midgar way, to insult one another so, or whether her plainness speaks more of her than she realises.</p><p>‘I should very much like to attend that dance,’ she says, which does not follow whatever Mrs Wright was saying. ‘At the assembly rooms.’</p><p>‘You will,’ Mrs Wright assures her. ‘While you were in the shops, I spotted an acquaintance of mine, and I arranged a walk with her and her daughter tomorrow morning, so that you might make an acquaintance.’</p><p>‘So that you do not have to accompany me?’ Shera asks.</p><p>‘Shera, darling, I love you as my own daughter, but you need friends your age, and – I am not sure Miss Aerith will keep you <em>out </em>of trouble, but she’ll be the best fit to keep you safe if you get into it. She is a wild thing, but she is good, and you deserve a good friend.’</p><p>Shera huffs out a laugh, and supposes that she is right. There is a point to be made for Shera’s lack of friends, but the terrible, awful part of her possessed of the same madness as her sister, so hare-brained and without fear, thinks that without Mrs Wright to accompany her, she might be able to get to that garden where her sister was spotted, and she might be able to ask some questions.</p><p>But she’d promised herself to not do that kind of thing, and so she just smiles, and thanks her for the opportunity.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Yes, it is who you think.</p><p>Catherine Highwind as played by Emma Thompson BC lbr. Emma has the same energy.</p><p>I imagine Reine is Winona Ryder and John is just. The big guy at the gym</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Mulling it Over</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Cid ponders and Shera contemplates.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Some discussion of injury. Cid is a sailor and Aerith is a wonderful girl.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He wakes with the dawn chorus, what of it there is in Midgar, which is admittedly more the workmen and early-risers hooting and hollering at each other from across the street like animals than it is actual animals. For a moment, he lies there and he stares at the ceiling, unsure, exactly, of when it was he fell asleep, but sure it had not been for long enough, his eyes itching and sore and too heavy to keep themselves open. But his mind is already full of thoughts, too many to be safely contained, and so he rubs his face, and gets to his feet. He washes his face in the basin, though the water is stale – which is his own fault, for he should have thought to change it before splashing his face with it – and dresses, forgoing both waistcoat and coat, because it’s early, and nobody will be awake yet, something he knows from the experience of having stayed here for several seasons. He scrubs his teeth in something of a daze, staring out of the window and finds that his thoughts are  circling back, one way or another, as they have been since the encounter in the bookshop, to the young lady he’d met there. Shera, so the woman hollering at her had called her, and he assumes her to be a Miss, given that there had been no rings on her fingers, never mind a posy ring. Though, he will admit, to himself, in some deep dark part of his brain that he refuses to acknowledge at any time of the day, never mind this early, a posy ring would suit her terribly well, given the daintiness of her fingers and the way she smiled.</p><p>Shaking his head to clear such thoughts, because they will serve him no purpose, never mind improve his life, he decides that perhaps tea, brewed sensibly, might help to shake the last of the sleepiness from him, he vacates his room and makes for the stairs. His mother would condemn him as a liar to suggest that he might be able to brew tea sensibly without supervision of a much more accomplished woman, by which she would be understood to mean any woman, as there could not be a woman alive less accomplished at making tea than Cid Highwind, but his mother is not here, and therefore cannot possibly condemn him, never mind raise her eyebrow at him when he invariably burns himself.</p><p>It is in the hallway, almost at the stairs, that he hears the low, pointed swearing coming from down the corridor. For a moment, he hesitates, and he listens to the frustration evident in the pitch of the curses, and he knows, even without bearing witness to it, what the issue is. He looks back to the stairs, and then back to the other end of the hall, and finally sighs. The planet has won out on his conscience, and so he goes to the appropriate door, raps his knuckles once, and turns the handle.</p><p>The past five years have felt a great many years longer than they have been, and he supposes that the sight of the scars, of the wrought flesh twisted and discoloured, will be a sight he never adjusts to. They are better, he will admit that freely, than what they were when he first saw them, in those first hours after he had exhausted his chocobo carrying three times the weight to get them to safety, those first hours after his mother, in her nightdress and her hair wild, had used a letter-opener to cut fabric from skin, while he had both fought to hold in their screams and stop himself vomiting. They look better.</p><p>But it will never be right, he knows this. The skin will forever be tight and angry and a terrible, horrible reminder of what that night had done to them.</p><p>Vincent has thrown the hand across the room, as he was wont to do, and is arguing, vehemently, with his shirt. It is a losing battle, because he has one hand to fight with, but he’s valiant in his attempts.</p><p>‘Fuck off, Cid,’ he says, from inside the cotton, and Cid heaves a breath, snaps his braces against his shoulders, and goes to sort him out.</p><p>‘First thing you’ve said to me in weeks,’ he says, and carefully eases the other man’s arms out of the tangle of fabric. ‘Almost missed the sound of your voice, except you say nothing worth listening to half the time.’</p><p>Vincent, shaking his head to get his hair out of his eyes, steps away, weight angled onto his good leg. Cid refuses to look at him, focusing on turning his shirt the right way out.</p><p>‘I do not need your help,’ Vincent says, and Cid heaves another breath, works on getting a sleeve straightened. ‘I can dress myself.’</p><p>‘I can see that,’ Cid says, and turns his head, but not his eyes, to the hand on the floor.</p><p>Vincent’s jaw tightens, and his lip wobbles for half a beat of his heart, then he stomps over and scoops it up.</p><p>‘The joints seized,’ he says, and stares at it.</p><p>In the greyness of the morning, for mornings always dawn grey and cold in Midgar, Vincent is pale, sallow even. He is as grey as the dawn, and he looks old for his years. He is not even thirty, and he has the dark circles and hollow cheeks of a man twice that.</p><p>‘Vincent,’ Cid says, because he has to say something.</p><p>It was not his fault, of course, that the papers did what they did, and it was not his fault that for all his and Zack’s best efforts, it had failed as a plan. The theory had been solid, the precautions they had taken overthought. They done their <em>best</em>, and that had had to be good enough.</p><p>‘Captain,’ Vincent replies, and sits in the chair at the dresser to strap the arm back on.</p><p>It’s jarring, the metal and flesh and the whiteness of the skin as he tightens the band, but only as jarring as it had been to pull the tourniquet tight about his arm in the first place, to listen to his mother telling him to have some maturity about himself as she did all she could do save them. He still, five years later, has no idea where she got the bone saw from, or why she’d had it in the first place.</p><p>Sometimes, he looks at his hands and sees the blood under his nails still.</p><p>‘Vincent, I – what happened, it wasn’t – ‘</p><p>‘It doesn’t matter what it was, or what it was <em>not</em>,’ Vincent says, and satisfied the arm is attached, gets to his feet to snatch his shirt from Cid’s hands.</p><p>He still struggles into it, but Cid doesn’t do him the disservice of yanking the fabric down over his elbows. Once he’s got the shirt over his head, he seems a different person, but he had always, ever since the fire, been more comfortable when no part of his skin could be seen. Cid does not begrudge him this, and does not blame him for the discomfort. The scars are ugly, to be polite, and they still give him pain, years later, aching in the cold weather, the dampness of the rain bringing with it a peculiar sadness to his shoulders, and though Cid knows he is not to blame, and therefore has no need to apologise for the fire, given that he was in Corel when it lit, and happened upon them by accident in the aftermath, he knows that he has no need to apologise. But he finds, regardless, a desperate urge to tell the poor bastard how <em>sorry</em> he was whenever he sees the scars, or the sadness of the rain.</p><p>Instead of apologising now, for the papers spreading the gossip <em>was</em> his fault, he says, ‘she wanted to see her son, and what was I supposed to do?’</p><p>‘I am not angry about that!’ Vincent exclaims, and whirls, first to look at Cid, and then to turn his back. His hand goes through his hair, and catches on tangles in the locks. ‘It is not that she wrote to you – or that you obliged, for I would have been angrier still if you had refused! But you did not <em>tell me</em>! I had to find out three weeks later, when the paper arrived at Miss Lockhart’s door!’</p><p>He shakes his head, and Cid licks his lips, clenches his fists. For a moment, he wants to snap back, he wants to shout, and holler, and make an arse of himself. Instead, he bites his nails into his palms, and bites the back of his lip, and finally exhales hard.</p><p>‘She did not want you to know.’</p><p>He may as well have cut him at the gut for all the harm it does.</p><p>‘She said that?’ Vincent asks, so very, very quiet.</p><p>He cannot take it back now; he cannot unsay what has been said.</p><p>‘When I went back to Deist, and I – I brought here, she said that – it was not that she didn’t want to see you, she just. Her son sees another woman as his mother, and you – you fault her for that?’</p><p>No, never mind, the anger is there, despite his best attempt to not let it hit his throat.</p><p>‘Fault her?’ Vincent asks. ‘Fault her? I could not fault her if she were to slit my throat! My issue is not with her, it is with you! Your – your secret-keeping and your outright lies! You claim friendship, and then you deny me the grace to know that a woman I – that I – that I became <em>this</em> for, that I love with everything I have left – you deny me the grace to know that she is <em>here</em>, in Midgar! Mr Fair I can forgive, he is not my friend, and it was not his duty to tell me, but you!’</p><p>Cid lets his heart beat in his chest once, twice, three times at speed, and then he snaps, ‘I didn’t trust you not to ruin it! You have been so – so – <em>desperate</em> – about seeing her, though she does not want to see you! I did not trust that you would not make it harder to hide her than it was already!’</p><p> ‘And some wonderful work you did on hiding her!’ Vincent shouts.</p><p>‘I did not know the story had been sold!’ Cid shouts back. ‘If I had known, I would have put paid to it and it would never have been known!’</p><p>‘So you would have kept it a secret forever? You trust me so little?’</p><p>A knock at the open door; Miss Lockhart, her lips twisted and eyes concerned.</p><p>‘Is all well?’ she asks, although it is clearly not.</p><p>‘Captain Highwind was just leaving,’ Vincent snipes, and turns his back, looks to the window.</p><p>Cid hovers for a second, and then storms from the room. Miss Lockhart tries to catch his arm, but he yanks it free, slams the door to his room behind him. The foolishness of Mr Valentine! He snorts to himself in indignance as he yanks on his waistcoat and tailcoat, cursing his name as he buttons the former and jerks the latter straight. He shoves his feet into his boots and then buries his face in his hands to hoarsely yell.</p><p>He cannot win for losing some days, and he had done his <em>best</em>! He had tried to keep every party safe, but he had travelled back to Deist to return her to the safety of the estate, where she was guaranteed privacy and solitude and the quiet company of the trees and the mountains and the inevitable rain, so she could grieve her son’s life in peace. If he had had an <em>inkling</em>, he would have had Mr Fair take her back, and he would have written a cheque to ensure the gossip’s silence, and that would have been the end of it! He cannot be in two places at once! Vincent is as close as a friend might be, but there are some things that he must keep to himself, not for Vincent’s safety, but for <em>hers</em>! And he understands that Vincent is angry about it! Absolutely he does! But the poor woman had just wanted to see her son, and it does not make him a villain to make that happen!</p><p>A door slams; Miss Lockhart has tried to smooth Vincent’s temper and had her heels clipped for the trouble, no doubt.</p><p>It is enough to drive a man to drink!</p><p>Raking his hands through his hair, he jerks his coat again, and longs for the open air of the plains. For now, he supposes he will have to forgo the tea at the bar, and seek it out in a tea room elsewhere, and engage in polite conversation with some dandy or another, for so long as the dandy would be able to tolerate his disinterest. Perhaps, he thinks, he might encounter Miss Shera again, and perhaps, he might be able to take her to tea.</p><p>He wonders, as he leaves the room again, with this plan in mind, whether she likes tea. Surely she must, she is a woman of good breeding, by her manner and her soft hands.  And she has common sense, in so much as common sense exists in this day and age, which stands her in good stead for having a partiality for tea. He wonders how she takes it, and wonders whether he might one day be able to serve it to her at Deist.</p><p>‘Ridiculous,’ he says to himself, because one chance encounter does not a marriage make, and besides which, he introduced himself by swearing and punching a man in the face, which cannot be an endearing character trait for a prospective suitor. Fuck sake.</p><p>‘We know you are, but must you be so loud before the sun is even <em>up</em>?’</p><p>And there, he thinks, lifting an elbow to look beneath it to find one of his most grievous pains, she is. The Princess herself, her expression tight with suspicion, and tired, dark beneath the mahogany shine of her eyes. She is a pretty enough little thing, barely sixteen with all the arrogance that comes with it, and her observance of social niceties and the expectations anybody might place upon her is about as tremulous as Aerith’s is. Dressed in that strange oversized way she dresses, flowing robes with big sleeves and wound fabric across her waist, she looks ready for the day, in so much as oversized sleeves and bare ankle looks ready.</p><p>‘What do you want?’ he asks.</p><p>‘You woke me up,’ she says, ‘so the least you can do for me is to buy me breakfast.’</p><p>‘You can get it for free here,’ he says, ‘you know Tifa will feed you.’</p><p>‘That is not the point,’ she says, with her hands on her hips, imperious as ever, ‘the point is you woke me.’</p><p>Cid sighs, closes his eyes, and stands there for the length of a heavy sigh.</p><p>‘For fuck sake,’ he says, because he is a man of good breeding, and fine manners, and it is too early in the morning for the bullshit he gets put through. ‘Have you told Tifa you’re going out?’</p><p>‘She’s not on my father’s payroll,’ the Princess replies, and Cid breathes heavily through his nose. ‘I have no need to tell her my whereabouts.’</p><p>Cid crosses the hall, bangs the side of his fist three times against another door and it opens, Miss Lockhart’s head poking out.</p><p>‘Cid,’ she says, softly, and he doesn’t want to discuss the business with Vincent.</p><p>‘Sorry about all that, Tifa. I’m taking her Highness out for breakfast,’ he says, ‘do you need anything while I am in town proper?’</p><p> Tifa thinks about it, because he’s allowed to call her Tifa, so familiar with her now after several seasons in Midgar spent here in her establishment, despite not drinking a drop of alcohol, and finally she shakes her head.</p><p>‘I think I should be fine. I can always send Cloud if I need anything from the market. Though – I haven’t seen Aerith since yesterday lunchtime. She said that her mother had arranged an introduction to a young lady for her, but I – just make sure she hasn’t gotten herself into trouble.’</p><p>‘I’ll keep my eyes open.’</p><p>Tifa studies him for a second, and then says, ‘you need to rest more.’</p><p>‘I need to do a lot of things,’ he says.</p><p>‘Like buy me breakfast!’ comes the quip from behind him.</p><p>He spreads his fingers, as if to show evidence, and Tifa laughs, bids him a good day and shuts the door on him.</p><p>‘Come on then, you little brat,’ he says, and they make their way down the stairs.</p><p>The Princess, who is indeed of royal blood, though not any royal blood this side of the ocean, is Yuffie Kisaragi, and she has been a thorn in Cid’s side for almost a solid year. She’s a small thing, but papercuts are the most painful, and Cid supposes that this is her way, the same way that Aerith’s way is to walk barefoot and sing bawdy songs and get her poor Mr Fair into fights for her honour, which she had discarded a long while ago. She came for an education, supposedly, though Cid has yet to see her attend any lectures, despite numerous invitations and offers of accompaniment. No, no, Yuffie, for she is a brat, and brats will do as they wont, spends her time making as much of a nuisance of herself as possible, and Tifa tries to tell him that the education she’s receiving on the streets is just as valid as the one she’d receive in a classroom, but Cid is not so sure, and as the acquaintance with the highest station of both occupation and blood, he knows that the ire will fall on him when she returns with nothing to show for herself.</p><p>‘Yuffie,’ he says, as they leave the inn and head out of the side street where <em>Seventh Heaven</em> sits, onto the main road leading into the market, and more importantly, the tea shops.</p><p>‘Yes,’ she replies, and when he glances down at her, her eyes are wide and challenging.</p><p>He huffs a breath through his nose, and digs into his pocket for a matchbook and his cigarettes. They’re incredibly unfashionable, but that’s precisely why he smokes them, instead of the pipes and cigars and that truly awful dogshit they stick up their noses in private balls. Fucking idiots, they have no idea what they’re doing.</p><p>‘You are aware that – fuck sake – you know, I can’t say it. Just – go to some lectures at the town hall this week, if you have any respect.’</p><p>He doesn’t say for who, because he doesn’t need to.</p><p>Yuffie eyes him, sullen beneath her brow, and then huffs.</p><p>‘Fine,’ she says, and thanks him for holding the door when they reach the tea shop. ‘You drive a hard bargain, Captain.’</p><p>‘Shut the fuck up,’ he replies, which makes an elegant lady at a table by the door bristle. ‘Sorry, ma’am.’</p><p>But he doesn’t really care; he’s never really cared about what the elite, or even the upper-middle class think of him.</p><p>Tea and breakfast for the brat ordered, Cid sets about paying no mind to her, and casting as surreptitious a glance about the room as possible.</p><p>‘Who are you looking for?’ Yuffie asks, too loudly to be polite, and Cid snorts.</p><p>‘None of your business.’</p><p>‘That girl you were talking to Tifa about?’ she asks, and leans across the table, because apparently she has decided to throw away any and all semblance to manners that she could possibly have.</p><p>‘Leave it be.’</p><p>‘Why do you never tell me anything?’</p><p>Cid looks to the ceiling, and then breathes a sigh of relief as breakfast and tea arrives, thereby removing any need for further conversation. The Princess is heartily occupied with bread and cake and making a mess of jam, and he can content himself with warming his fingers on the china of his cup. While Yuffie is distracted, he looks around the room again, but sees no sign of Miss Shera, and he wonders, in that way he supposes men have, of whether he is being entirely too ridiculous for his own well-being. He saw the girl once, and that is not enough to make him consider changing his ways. Surely.</p><p>‘You cannot keep a secret,’ Cid says eventually, and Yuffie grunts.</p><p>‘Huh?’ Such nice manners this girl has. ‘Oh, well – I can, and I do. I kept all of your secrets about going to Deist. I didn’t breathe a <em>word</em> of it to Mr Valentine, even though I knew full well what you were doing.’</p><p>‘Is that so?’ he asks, and he knows that Yuffie hadn’t said a word of it; Vincent is a terrible liar, and if she’d said so much as a word, he would have not been able to keep it quiet. No, no, she hadn’t said anything, and Vincent had only found out because of the paper.</p><p>‘It is so,’ she repeats. ‘I don’t know what exactly it is you do in Deist, but it involves his lady, and I think that’s despicable.’</p><p>Oh, the naivety of youth.</p><p>‘Surely,’ Cid replies, his eyes firmly on a painting the other side of the room, and the half-curve of his mouth hidden behind his teacup, for he knows exactly what he’s about to do. ‘Surely, you should like it very much if I was – involved – with his lady. It clears the path for you, does it not?’</p><p>Yuffie’s mouth falls open, and she makes a few flustered noises, her cheeks reddening and her hands flapping. She is so easily played, so easily led, and her – though Cid will not understand it – adorable fixation upon Vincent, dark and brooding and so full of anger as he is, is the easiest of targets for distracting and disrupting her possible.</p><p>‘Tell me,’ Cid continues, still around his teacup, hiding the grin threatening to give the innocent angle of his eyebrows away. ‘How much longer am <em>I</em> to keep <em>your</em> secrets?’</p><p>‘You cannot tell him anything!’ Yuffie exclaims, louder than strictly necessary. ‘You cannot! Cid, I mean it!’</p><p>Cid tells her to finish her breakfast, and then they might take a walk along the Wall, and see what trinkets there are at the market today. Yuffie ducks her chin, and her ears burn sun-hot as she shoves another morsel into her mouth.</p>
<hr/><p>The morning dawns bright and warm, and she finds Mr and Mrs Wright in the dining room already, breakfast on the table. She hovers at the doorway for a moment; they’re deep in conversation, utterly unaware she’s come downstairs.</p><p>‘I worry about her, John,’ Mrs Wright is saying, clattering about as she makes tea.</p><p>‘You and I both,’ he replies. ‘As much as she needs a season, I wonder if this was the right season to bring her to.’</p><p>‘We invite her every year,’ Mrs Wright says, ‘it would have been suspect if we hadn’t.’</p><p>‘But the rumours – ‘</p><p>‘Are unfounded,’ Mrs Wright interrupts, harder than she probably meant to. ‘Even if we had not taken the paper with us, she would have heard about it within days of being here, and better she know that from the off.’</p><p>For a moment, they’re silent, and the weight of it echoes around the room. Shera had indeed read the paper; it is what convinced her to attend the season, and she suspects that both Mr and Mrs Wright know that.</p><p>‘She’s so like her sister,’ Mrs Wright sighs. ‘She will want to know the truth.’</p><p>‘The truth is that Lucy is dead,’ Mr Wright replies, gentle enough, but the sting remains. Five years, and the pain has not eased in the least. ‘She died in that fire, and to suppose otherwise would be to do her a disservice. The whole thing was such a mess that I am only surprised it took five years for rumours to start.’</p><p>Mrs Wright considers this with a hum, and Shera wonders if this is what marriage is supposed to be like; between these two and her parents, she has seen little more than a complete connection of two souls, so in tune that half of the conversation goes unsaid. She supposes that this is because they have had this conversation before; what to do with Shera, now that Midgar is tainted with the smoke and soot of the Nibelheim Manor’s burning, and the death of it’s mistress.</p><p>‘There’s not much for her to learn,’ Mrs Wright says, with a heavy sigh. ‘She is no more foolish than her sister was, when she thought to use her brain.’</p><p>Which is perhaps a little harsh, but Shera supposes it is a fair enough criticism.</p><p>‘There is no one for her to talk to, not in any meaningful sense.’</p><p>‘There is Mr Valentine.’</p><p>‘Who is <em>deeply</em> troubled, and he deserves a small amount of privacy, Reine. We can at least do our part to give him that. To survive the fire is punishment enough without having to face the favourite person of the love of his life.’</p><p>Shera has heard that name before. Mr Valentine’s name had been – mud, after the fire. Her mother had refused to hear it, even though Shera had asked, young and not really understanding the <em>importance</em> of his name, she’d asked, and her mother had cried for days. Her father had told her that Mr Valentine was not a gentleman, and therefore had no place in body or in spirit at their dining table, and to give her mother’s nerves some small mercy by not mentioning him.</p><p>They don’t say anything for several moments, and so Shera enters, a smile on her face like her stomach isn’t full of moths for the mention of Mr Valentine. If he is deeply troubled, if he deserves his privacy in such a manner that Mr Wright thinks it ill-advised to mention him, perhaps he is in Midgar. Perhaps she might be able to seek him out, to ask him for the truth, and not just what her odious brother-in-law had told them that dark, horrible night.</p><p>She admits to herself, as she smiles and nods her way through morning greetings, that it is not much of a plan, but it is a plan nonetheless, and she feels better about the prospect of the city, of the hustle and bustle and noise. Perhaps she might find that Captain again, though she is not entirely certain she should wish to. He was terribly rude, and though she knows men are fond of boxing, an unannounced spar in the middle of a bookshop is certainly not within the rules. He was aware of Hojo, and some part of her, thinking in the roundabout way that she thinks when she is not really thinking at all, supposes that if he knows Hojo, it is likely he knows this Mr Valentine, whom, supposedly, had held such love for her sister so close to his breast as to have been in the fire with her.</p><p>She says nothing to Mr or Mrs Wright about these roundabout thoughts; Mr Wright is off to the city for the day, claiming some work or another with a Mr Wallace, and Mrs Wright makes the face of one who has long since stopped enquiring after her husband’s dealings. This leaves Mrs Wright and Shera to their own devices, but this is not a sorrow; Mrs Wright is quick to remind Shera of their expected call.</p><p>‘You will adore Miss Aerith tremendously,’ Mrs Wright assures her, as they take their tea to the drawing room, ‘though her disregard for any sort of etiquette threatens to ruin her poor mother.’</p><p>‘She disregards the norms?’</p><p>To Shera, for whom order and the norms of society, the rules of etiquette by which they must live for their lives to be successful are vital parts of her character, disregard for those same things is confusing at best, downright unbelievable at worst. She had seen what not living by the rules could do, was one sister less for it, and for this Miss Aerith to flaunt them so! Well, it did not sit right.</p><p>‘She is an entirely different breed of girl,’ Mrs Wright says, entirely without malice. ‘You will understand when you meet her. Her spirit is – how to say – she is very like her mother.’</p><p>‘Then Mrs Gainsborough is not one for norms?’</p><p>‘Ah, no. Miss Aerith is not Mrs Gainsborough’s daughter by blood. Her mother was a close friend of Mrs Gainsborough, some business with their husbands, before their passing, Planet guide their souls. Mrs Gast, as I knew her, she was a free sort, would not be tied to any soil. It was a tragedy that she died so young. Very nasty business, so I understand, a poisoning of the blood, turned her skin black as coal. She brought Miss Aerith to Mrs Gainsborough, asked her to raise her as her own.’</p><p>‘That was a kind thing Mrs Gainsborough did, to raise another’s child.’</p><p>Mrs Wright looks at her then, as though she wants to say something, but daren’t. Shera supposes she knows what the comment should be; an aside about her nephew, and the rumour that haunts him like a second shadow. The poor child, to never know for sure whether any of his parents were his own, the way the rumours would tell it. Though Shera had not been to Midgar to hear these rumours for herself, her father’s line of work enticed men and women from across the land, seeking the healing waters of Mideel, and his advice on their sore joints and ill-tempered heads. They had brought with them rumours, whispers of the supposed disgrace the Crescents sat in within Midgar, and Shera had thought it stupid at best. That one girl’s actions, so far removed from her family, could damage their reputation so thoroughly – well, she had yet to see a downturn in sought advice and medicinal tinctures at the apothecary, so the disgrace cannot be all that horrid.</p><p>‘You say that Miss Aerith threatens to ruin her mother?’ she asks, to get something more from the conversation.</p><p>‘Mrs Gainsborough has been trying for some time now to secure the match between her daughter and her suitor. It is a done thing, to be sure; that they have not eloped is a mystery for ages, but truth be told I would imagine they have, and have neglected to tell anybody.’</p><p>‘Then why not just announce it? Surely that would save both of their reputations, and all those around them?’</p><p>Mrs Wright smiles. ‘You’ll understand when you meet her,’ she repeats.</p><p>Miss Aerith Gainsborough is a very pretty young woman, within a year or so of Shera, though an inch or so shorter. Though Shera does not particularly bother with the intricacies of braiding her hair, the sheer volume of Aerith’s necessitated some careful consideration and a length of pink ribbon that could easily have barricaded a room. Elegantly shaped, if not elegantly dressed, Shera felt oddly small and familiarly plain next to her. But Miss Aerith did not seem all that concerned with Shera’s plainness of feature, or the practicality of her dress; indeed, the moment she could, she complained – loudly – of the discomfort of the pelisse her mother had allegedly forced her to wear, though it was a very lovely and striking shade of cerise.</p><p>‘I long to be away from my elders,’ Miss Aerith tells her, conspiratorially, as they make their way out of the Wright House and out into the greenery bordering the back of the property, arm in arm. ‘My Mr Fair has no concern for my propriety, you see, and he is quite comfortable with my being barefoot.’</p><p>‘Barefoot?’ Shera repeats, and looks at Miss Aerith’s well-worn half-boots.</p><p>‘Pay her no heed!’ calls Mrs Gainsborough, some feet behind them, ‘she will go barefoot as she pleases, my want of sense means little!’</p><p>Both girls glance over their shoulders at their elders, and then Miss Aerith laughs, loud and full of mirth.</p><p>‘She’s allowed me to remain true to my mother,’ she says, and turns to face the direction they’re walking. ‘I don’t have any memories of my mother’s shoes.’</p><p>‘Ifalna wore shoes only when Mr Gast needed her to, and not for a moment longer than she had to,’ Mrs Gainsborough says, and Miss Aerith nods.</p><p>‘It is the way that I would live my life, if only the streets weren’t so dirty.’</p><p>Shera doesn’t know what to say to that, and so she says nothing, and they walk for another few minutes in silence. Miss Aerith is not an uncomfortable walking partner, for she seems fond of the outdoors, listening to the birds, and pausing to smell the flowers. She runs her fingers along a hedgerow of pretty little yellow flowers, before twisting one from its fellows and tucking it neatly into Shera’s braid.</p><p>‘There,’ she says with a little nod, ‘perfect.’</p><p>Shera has never been called perfect, at least not by someone not her parents, and the compliment makes her flush.</p><p>‘Do you wear yellow often?’ Miss Aerith asks, and gestures at Shera’s dress, a plain but pretty affair in the colour of sunshine.</p><p>‘I – I suppose I do,’ Shera nods, after a moment’s thought, ‘it is a colour I like to wear, especially on rainy days.’</p><p>‘Yes,’ Miss Aerith nods in return, ‘that would make sense. It is a good colour. It suits you.’</p><p>It feels like she wants to say more, but Shera is learning quickly that Miss Aerith is not one to hold back any thought she might have, and so the rest of what she wishes to say is quick to follow.</p><p>‘I have a friend, a gentleman – though he would be much obliged if you refrained from referring to him as such – who tells me that he met a beautiful young lady in yellow not yesterday.’</p><p>Shera blinks, and then bites at her lip, looks at the tips of her walking boots, peeking out from beneath her dress as she walks.</p><p>‘I suppose Midgar is a large enough place,’ Miss Aerith continues, ‘and I cannot imagine you are the only girl to be wearing yellow. But it strikes me that such a girl would surely remember him, for he was mortified to have conducted himself poorly.’</p><p>Though Shera had only seen the man for a moment, and had shared so few words as to count them all on her fingers, she cannot imagine that the Captain was such a man as to have mortification over his actions, when such an action was so quick to occur.</p><p>‘He punched a man,’ she whispers, harried and eager both, as though it is the most scandalous of gossip. ‘In the middle of a bookshop!’</p><p>Miss Aerith’s eyes, green like fire, light up, and the smile on her mouth is a pleasant sort of wicked.</p><p>‘That is indeed my gentleman friend!’ she whispers back, just as conspiratorial. ‘Oh, Miss Shera, I should very much like it if you attended the ball at the Honey Bee Assembly Rooms, so that you may be formally introduced!’</p><p>At this, though Shera had been pondering meeting the man formally, and being introduced in such a way that she might be able to have a conversation with him, she hesitates.</p><p>‘You are not attending?’ Miss Aerith asks.</p><p>‘No, no, I – I plan to, and I am very much looking forward to it! But I – he was a very rude gentleman.’</p><p>‘Yes,’ Miss Aerith laughs, and squeezes Shera’s arm. ‘He is that.’</p><p>Shera considers this, and they walk some many more minutes in comfortable silence, Miss Aerith humming a pleasant little tune to herself as they walk, and it is oddly calming, a soothing sort of thing. Shera does not need to ask to know that it is something that her mother sang to her as an infant.</p><p>‘Say,’ Shera asks, tentative, and Miss Aerith’s humming stops on a curious little lilt.</p><p>‘What is it?’</p><p>‘I – do you know a man,’ she starts, and Miss Aerith snorts.</p><p>‘I know several, though my dignity would be better served to know none.’</p><p>Shera laughs, and then shakes her head. ‘No, no, a specific man. I was – I wonder if perhaps you might know Mr Valentine.’</p><p>Miss Aerith’s eyebrows knot together. ‘Mr Valentine? Why would you be enquiring about Mr Valentine?’</p><p>Shera is surprised at the hardness of her tone, and tries not to retreat from Miss Aerith’s grip.</p><p>‘I – I heard his name, is all, and I wonder if perhaps I might speak with him?’</p><p>At this, Miss Aerith does let go of her arm, and takes half a step away.</p><p>‘Why would you wish to do that?’ she asks again. ‘I – Shera, you must understand. Mr Valentine has – been through a lot of terrible things.’</p><p>‘I understand,’ she says, with a nod, and glances back; Mrs Wright and Mrs Gainsborough are a long ways back, and she cannot hear the conversation they are enjoying. ‘I – I believe he was involved with my family, some many years ago.’</p><p>Miss Aerith narrows her eyes, and it’s almost a frown.</p><p>‘Your family?’ she asks, and then her eyes widen. ‘A specific part of your family, I imagine.’</p><p>Shera nods. For a moment, they stare at each other, and then Miss Aerith shakes her head.</p><p>‘I am sure,’ she says, ‘that you have every good intention, but – he would not be – Shera, please know that it is not out of malice that I say this – but Mr Valentine, he would – it would make him so terribly sad, to speak to you, and I would not be a good friend to him, or to you, to allow that kind of sadness.’</p><p>Shera breathes deep in her nose. ‘I understand,’ she says, and Miss Aerith closes the gap to take Shera’s arm again.</p><p>‘I hope that this does not affect our friendship.’</p><p>Shera shakes her head. ‘No, no, I am glad for your honesty.’</p><p>Miss Aerith nods, and they continue on their walk, talk turning to other things; the ball, and Midgar society, and Miss Aerith’s love of bawdy tavern songs that would make a grown man blush.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I am so in love with this au i cannot even tell you.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Comet</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A dance at the Honey Bee Assembly Rooms gives way to a few realisations.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>There are a couple of big scenes to get to, so for now we get idiot children being idiots.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shera feels very unprepared.</p><p>She stands on the street and stares up at the steps leading into the Honey Bee Assembly Rooms, where people are jostling each other to get both up the steps and in through the doors, and she hasn’t seen so many people in one place. She glances down at her dress; suddenly the sprigged muslin feels very plain and her hair is not nearly curled enough. Mrs Wright stands beside her, waiting patiently.</p><p>‘We don’t have to go,’ she says, and Shera takes a deep breath.</p><p>‘No, no, I promised Miss Aerith that I would be here, and so I am here,’ Shera says, and takes another breath. ‘It’s just – a lot of people.’</p><p>Mrs Wright laughs, and takes Shera’s elbow. ‘Ready?’ she asks.</p><p>Shera is not ready, but she steels her free elbow all the same and they make their way up the steps.</p><p>A pretty girl is stood at the door, in a lovely yellow dress with some black voile atop it, and she waves politely at Shera, beckons her over.</p><p>‘This is your first time here?’ the girl asks, and then laughs, not unkindly, at the expression on Shera’s face. ‘You look very nervous, Miss. You needn’t be. The Master of Ceremonies has made sure that the environment is the safest around. If you have any questions or concerns, there are ladies in the same dress as me throughout that will be happy to help.’</p><p>Shera blinks at her, and the girl smiles back at her.</p><p>‘If anyone gives you any trouble, let us know, and Mister Rhodea will ensure that they are dealt with appropriately.’</p><p>It’s a very professional way of saying it, but Shera feels peculiarly comforted regardless.</p><p>‘Thank you,’ she says.</p><p>The girl nods. ‘Enjoy the dance, Miss.’</p><p>Mrs Wright leads her inside.</p><p>‘Is there likely to be trouble?’ Shera asks, close to the older woman’s ear to be heard over the hubbub.</p><p>‘In the Bee?’ Mrs Wright hollers back. ‘It’s always possible. Ah, there’s Miss Aerith. I’ll be in the tearoom.’</p><p>And like that, Shera is cast adrift. She glances over her shoulder, but Mrs Wright is nowhere to be seen, and when Shera looks back in the initial direction she’d been facing, she can’t see Miss Aerith at all. She almost says something very uncouth, and nearly screams when someone takes her elbow.</p><p>Miss Aerith laughs, pure delight, and smooths her hand over Shera’s forearm.</p><p>‘It’s only me,’ she laughs, and begins to tug. ‘Come on, we’ve got a quiet corner.’</p><p>We? Shera ponders this as she lets Miss Aerith lead her across the hall and, indeed, into a quiet corner. The way the pillars are structured keeps some of the sound out, and Shera can almost hear her own thoughts.</p><p>‘I suppose I must make <em>formal</em> introductions,’ Miss Aerith scoffs, throwing her shoulders about in a very unseemly sort of way, but it makes Shera smile.</p><p>‘Yes,’ says a very pretty lady in a beautiful black and white gown, ‘unless you want to call Andrea to do it for you.’</p><p>Miss Aerith wrinkles her nose. ‘No. Not after the last time he tried to introduce me. How does a man get a – a – a reverse lisp? It’s a “th” not a “s,” I mean it’s not <em>hard</em>.’</p><p> The pretty lady in the black dress rubs under one eye.</p><p>‘Aerith,’ she says, and Miss Aerith harrumphs quite loudly.</p><p>‘Fine! Shera, this is Miss Tifa Lockhart, she is a lady of considerable means who runs an establishment she is <em>not</em> qualified to run. Tifa, this is Miss Shera, she’s new here.’</p><p>Miss Lockhart takes both barbs with grace and inclines her head.</p><p>‘It’s nice to meet you, Miss Shera,’ she says, ‘I’m sure you’ve already learnt to let Aerith run over you like water off a duck’s back.’</p><p>‘Run over is right,’ comes a grumble from the furthest pillar, where a broad blue tailcoat leans facing away from them.</p><p>Shera knows that voice. She can feel her ears burning. He doesn’t turn to face them, more the pity.</p><p>Miss Aerith sticks her tongue out at the coat and looks back to Shera.</p><p>‘This is Mr Cloud Strife, he’s a fine boy to ask if you need anything fetching.’</p><p>Mr Strife ignores her with the kind of raised chin that comes from practice, and he offers Shera a smile and a nod. He’s very close to Miss Lockhart. Too close, even, Shera thinks, desperately clawing at the little she remembers of etiquette for dances. Don’t dance with the same person too many times, don’t dance with your intended or your spouse. So many rules.</p><p>‘And this,’ Miss Aerith hums with a broad, pleasant smile, her fingertips warm against a military sleeve, ‘is my Mr Fair that I was telling you about. He is positively wonderful.’</p><p>‘Not what you called me this morning,’ Mr Fair replies, but his voice curves into a grin his mouth quickly follows. ‘Bane of your life, you said.’</p><p>‘I was cross,’ Miss Aerith says.</p><p>Mr Fair grins at Shera then. ‘You’ll learn not to argue with her. She’s no better than a feral cat.’</p><p>‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Miss Lockhart hums, examining the buttons of her glove with the idle care of someone biting back a laugh, ‘at least the cats round the back of ‘<em>Heaven</em> manage to scare the mice away.’</p><p>Miss Aerith snorts. ‘What are you trying to imply?’</p><p>Mr Strife looks to the ceiling, and then to his boots, and then to Miss Aerith. ‘If there is trouble,’ he tells her, earnest as a child, ‘you will bring it to Tifa’s door and then run in the opposite direction.’</p><p>‘Not true! I at least make it worse before I leave.’</p><p>At this, they laugh, the familiar laugh of friends who have dealt with too many instances of trouble to mind anything too seriously.</p><p>‘Oh!’ Miss Aerith exclaims then, because she must see the beginnings of discomfort on Shera’s face. ‘I almost forgot. This handsome man,’ she says, grabbing the blue coat and yanking hard enough that the body in it almost loses its balance. She’s almost, <em>almost</em>, drowned out by the litany of bad language that comes tumbling out of his mouth. ‘Is Captain Cid Highwind, and he’s going to put his name on your card for the next dance.’</p><p>‘Am I <em>fuck</em>,’ Captain Highwind barks.</p><p>At the same time, Shera squeaks, ‘he’s going to what?’</p><p>In a move Shera will learn is very, <em>very</em> common for Miss Aerith, almost as if she’d orchestrated the whole thing, the music playing ends, and the announcer calls for the next dance.</p><p>‘Of course it’s one I fucking know,’ the Captain grunts, rubs the heel of a hand into his eye before looking across at Shera. ‘Do you know the Comet?’</p><p>She racks her brains as quickly as she can, and draws vague patterns with her fingers in the space between them; the steps, as best she can remember them.</p><p>Miss Aerith nods encouragingly, because she’s clearly terrible, and Captain Highwind extends his arm.</p><p>‘We don’t have to,’ Shera tells him, even as she hooks her fingers into his elbow.</p><p>‘Sure we do,’ he replies, and it comes out far more jovial than she would have expected. They fall into place in the line, and they both watch other couples stand up next to them. ‘You done this before?’</p><p>‘Danced?’ Shera asks.</p><p>For a moment, there’s a hush, and then the music begins. There’re several couples to turn before they need to dance.</p><p>‘Not at a ball,’ she admits, watching the lead couple to make sure she knows the steps. ‘I’ve never had opportunity to go.’</p><p>‘You’ve not been to a ball?’ he sounds incredulous, and she glances at him; his expression is oddly intense, his eyes very blue. ‘Have you – you have been to Midgar before?’</p><p>‘Never, sir,’ she replies, light as air. ‘This is my first season.’</p><p>His eyes are wide even as his brow creases. ‘First season? But you’re – you’re – ‘</p><p>‘Twenty, sir,’ she nods, ‘I was – there had been a – well. I did not need to attend a season before now.’</p><p>He looks at her then, and she finds herself captivated in his gaze, as though the rest of the Room had simply ceased to be the moment their gazes met. She hasn’t seen eyes so blue before, and never seen such a blue outside of a clear midsummer sky, and she imagines she can see stars in them, even from this distance, pinpricks of light catching from the lights all around them. He’s handsome, in a way none of the boys – men – in Mideel had been handsome; he’s all cheekbone and the bow of his top lip, the shadow of hair where he obviously hadn’t shaved in a day or more, the faint twist of a scar in his eyebrow, a broken nose pushed slightly off-centre. Blond hair swept back at a cut just shorter than fashionable, though there’s the hint of curls forming at his crown, tugged loose by their own unruliness. No doubt he’d had his head basted with pomade by one or the other of the two ladies in his acquaintance, in some dire attempt to make him presentable. She’s surprised he made it in here with the boots on his feet.</p><p>Though having said that, he is not the only man in boots, and she wonders if there had been some update to the accepted fashions that she had not been aware of.</p><p>Concerned, she glances down at herself, at her shoes, and then the shoes of the ladies either side of her. Hers are a little plain, but they don’t seem any different.</p><p>She’s thankful for the distraction. It’s rude to stare, but it hadn’t stopped her any.</p><p>‘I should probably be grateful you haven’t had a season yet,’ Captain Highwind says, and she flinches, gaze snapping back to him.</p><p>‘What,’ she starts, but the next couple up pass them by and then they’re obligated to join the dance.</p><p>She’s thankful for this distraction in turn; she has to concentrate so that she doesn’t step on her own feet, or trip, or somehow manage to collide into another couple.</p><p>‘Relax,’ the Captain grins at her from across the way, before stepping into her to pass and round another dancer. ‘You’re thinking too much.’</p><p>‘I’m afraid I’ll trip,’ she admits, and they step back into the middle.</p><p>He takes her hand, as is part of the dance, and leads her to the end of their set. His hand is warm, blisteringly so, like the bed pan when she forgets it’s there and touches her toes to it in the dead of winter and nearly takes the skin off. Even through their gloves, she can feel the heat of his hand, and he seems as startled by her surprise as she is.</p><p>Settling into their new places, as the dance continues around them, she glances across to find him watching her again.</p><p>‘What?’ she asks.</p><p>‘You look very familiar,’ he admits. ‘Like I’ve seen you before.’</p><p>‘You have seen me before, Captain.’</p><p>He makes a noise that could be a laugh. The man next to him frowns at him; sniggering is impolite, she supposes.</p><p>‘You may be right there,’ he concedes, ‘but there is something in your face that I recognise, and I cannot place it. Have your family been to Midgar before?’</p><p>She feels choked, like her neckline, dangerously low across her bust, slight though her bosom is, is up about her throat. The walls feel too close. The loss of her sister weighs on her like she is Titan reborn.</p><p>‘No, sir,’ she replies, and has to clear her throat so she can say it again in a way that sounds like words. ‘No, I don’t think so. My father, perhaps, many years ago. He learnt his trade here, I believe, when he was a very young man.’</p><p>‘Trade?’</p><p>‘He’s a doctor. In Mideel.’</p><p>The Captain is silent for a moment, and the flutter of his eyelashes, the turn of his mouth, suggests that he is processing this information. She cannot imagine why he needs to process it, when it is simple enough, but he’s chewing on it in his head, she can tell.</p><p>‘A doctor,’ he repeats, and then he brightens, the shadow of whatever he’d been thinking shaking from his shoulders. ‘Then you might attend some lectures, while you are here?’</p><p>She nods. ‘I should like to. I have – There are some I do not wish to attend.’</p><p>Her brother-in-law’s in particular.</p><p>‘No,’ he agrees, ‘I couldn’t imagine sitting in on that prick’s lectures any.’</p><p>Funny that they should feel the same about him, despite having not used his name, for he is the only man delivering lectures this season that Shera could possibly consider ascribing the epithet to.</p><p>‘There is one on Tuesday,’ he says, ‘about the stars. I thought of attending.’</p><p>He says it offhand enough, a passing observation, but she knows, in her gut, that she’ll be there.</p><p>‘That might be interesting,’ she nods. ‘I have always wanted to know more, but we had no books on the subject at home.’</p><p>The music comes to an end, finally, and Shera dips her ankle as the Captain drops his shoulders, and then, just like that, he disappears into the crowd.</p><hr/><p>Shera does not dance again. She goes to the tearoom, where she finds Mrs Wright chattering away to Mrs Gainsborough and a handful of other ladies. They obligingly make room for her when Mrs Wright introduces her, but Shera cannot imagine being able to remember their names. She longs for fresh air, and stares at the open doors to the terrace. Everything feels cloying all of a sudden, too close and tight and hot, and something gurgles in her stomach.</p><p>‘Excuse me,’ she says, and nearly knocks the chair over in her haste to get up.</p><p>‘Are you alright, darling?’ Mrs Wright asks, catching her hand.</p><p>‘I’m fine,’ she assures her, smile forced on, ‘I’m just – I need a little air. I’ll just be outside.’</p><p>‘Stay in sight,’ Mrs Wright says, ‘I can see the potted lavender from here.’</p><p>Shera nods and does her best to make her way past the tables and gaggles of people without disturbing too many of them. The fresh air feels too fresh, burning in her lungs, and she takes deep gulps of it, clutching at the stone balustrade and staring at the garden. It’s only small, the Assembly Rooms in too busy a part of the city to have much of a green space. But out here in the dark, it feels endless.</p><p>She swallows thickly, tastes salt and bile, and she digs her fingertips harder into the stone, feels her nails bending.</p><p>Her sister is dead.</p><p>This whole trip was a mistake. She should not have – she should never have – in the morning she will ask to go home, back to Mideel, where it is safe. Where she knows everyone, and nothing is a surprise, and nobody can hurt her.</p><p> She can smell the lavender next to her, and she breathes it in, tries to focus on that instead of the gurgle of her stomach, the bile in her throat.</p><p>‘Fuck me,’ comes a laugh from behind her, the snap of a match, ‘my dancing wasn’t that bad, was it?’</p><p>She whirls, nearly knocks the lavender from the balustrade.</p><p>The Captain is on the other end of the terrace, next to the steps leading down into the garden. He’s got an incredibly unfashionable cigarette in his mouth, and he’s shaking a match out, flicking it into the nothingness of the shadows. His gloves are gone, his coat unbuttoned, and he looks dishevelled. She should not be surprised; he’s handsome enough.</p><p>He crosses the terrace to stand downwind of her, cigarette between his fingertips and his elbows on the stone.</p><p>‘Your dancing was fine,’ she replies, and it sounds clipped.</p><p>His eyebrows climb. She looks at the length of his back, stretched out beneath the silk of his coat, his hips cocked to account for the height of the balustrade.</p><p>‘Don’t sound too encouraging,’ he snorts, glances across at her.</p><p>‘I’m sorry.’</p><p>‘Don’t apologise. If I said something, I should – you know, Aerith’s always on my arse about how I talk to people, how I open my mouth and say the stupidest bullshit. So if I said something to upset, I apologise.’</p><p>She gets the feeling he doesn’t apologise often, and she finds a smile twitching the corners of her mouth.</p><p>‘You didn’t say anything,’ she assures him. ‘It’s just. All a bit – much.’</p><p>‘Much,’ the Captain echoes. ‘That’s one word for it.’</p><p>‘I lied,’ she blurts out after a moment, when the silence has dragged comfortably for too long. ‘About my family coming to Midgar. I had a sister; she came here for her season.’</p><p>He’s quiet for a moment. ‘Had,’ he echoes, softly.</p><p>Shera takes a breath, two, swallows thickly. ‘She died,’ she says. ‘Some years ago.’</p><p>‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he says, perfunctory, because that’s what you say when someone tells you about a death. ‘I shouldn’t have pried.’</p><p>‘You weren’t to know,’ she shrugs, and stares into the darkness. ‘When I was a child, I used to dream that she would bring me here for my season and she would do my introductions, and we would – I don’t even know what we would have done.’</p><p>‘But it would have been fun?’ the Captain asks.</p><p>‘Almost certainly.’</p><p>He doesn’t say anything to that for several minutes, just smokes his cigarette into a stub and tosses it into the grass.</p><p>‘I won’t ask if you want to dance again,’ he says, ‘I don’t think I could bear that mob a second time.’</p><p>‘No,’ she agrees. ‘No, I don’t think I could either.’</p><p>They fall silent again for several moments.</p><p>‘Do you like tea?’ he asks, and it comes out of his mouth far louder than she expects he meant it to.</p><p>She blinks, hesitates. It feels like a trick question.</p><p>‘Yes,’ she says, slowly, ‘with – with milk and one sugar. Unless it’s that specific one at afternoon tea, and then I take it with lemon.’</p><p>He hums, and then says, ‘good,’ with no further elaboration.</p><p>She doesn’t ask.</p><p>A shout of his rank from inside, and he turns, groans.</p><p>‘Fucking sick of him,’ he grunts.</p><p>‘Who?’ Shera asks, but he doesn’t answer her.</p><p>He inclines his head, bids her farewell, and disappears inside again. She watches his back, the grace with which he walks, so assured and yet so light, and then turns back to the darkness. She’s alone for a few more minutes and then Mrs Wright comes to stand next to her.</p><p>‘Who was that gentleman?’ she asks.</p><p>‘Captain Highwind,’ she says, ‘I danced with him.’</p><p>‘You did?’</p><p>‘Miss Aerith introduced us.’</p><p>Mrs Wright hums, fans herself with a dainty little paper fan, staring back into the room, where Shera is sure Captain Highwind is nowhere to be seen.</p><p>‘Are you going to dance again?’ she asks.</p><p>‘No,’ Shera admits, ‘I don’t think so. It was a bit – I think I am done for the night.’</p><p>Really, the night has barely begun, but Mrs Wright nods, and they take their leave. Mr Wright is glad of it; he does not enjoy the games room overly much, but it is a useful place to talk about the wider goings-on in the world. Indeed, he tells them about the latest goings-on in the ongoing drama that is the Corel mines.</p><p>‘They’re starting up the new mine soon,’ Mr Wright says, ‘on the other side of the mountains, out towards the plains.’</p><p>‘Oh, good,’ says Mrs Wright, in the way a wife might be pleased to have an end to a subject that has gone on for too long, except that Shera knows her better.</p><p>‘It’s taken a long time, hasn’t it?’ Shera asks.</p><p>She only remembers what happened with the Corel mines because it had been weeks before the fire at the Manor, and it had still been in the newspaper when news of the fire came.</p><p> ‘Several years,’ Mr Wright agrees. ‘But there’s been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about who could take over the mines, and whether the land around could be mined. Money has been a big part of the problem, apparently, what with the Prince’s involvement in the Corel mines.’</p><p>‘He was foolish to do it,’ Mrs Wright says, with some small amount of spite. ‘He had no business getting involved. They were managing just fine.’</p><p>‘I know,’ Mr Wright assures her, ‘and everyone out there knows that. But the Prince does what he wants and nobody can tell him otherwise.’</p><p>That borders dangerously close to treason, but Shera is not one to tattle. Besides, she’d thought the same when she first read the news. The Prince had sounded very much like a spoilt brat buying a new toy and breaking it for the sake of it. The mines had functioned perfectly well without him, and to change their methods and their tools and cause as many deaths as he had, well.</p><p>She wouldn’t be able to discuss it with him, that was for sure.</p><p>‘Either way,’ Mr Wright continues with an idle shrug, ‘it’s been settled now, and they’ll start the new mine out in the next month or so, weather depending.’</p><p>‘Will Mr Wallace go back?’ Mrs Wright asks, and Shera glances back to her from where she’d been gazing out of the window.</p><p>‘No,’ Mr Wright says with a shake of his head. ‘No. He’s been mulling it over for a while, but he’s finally got his girl a good tutor, and by his own admission, her prospects are slim enough already without taking her back into the wilderness.’</p><p> Mrs Wright hums sadly. ‘Such a tricky situation for him.’</p><p>They say no more about it, so Shera has no real idea what they’re talking about, and not much interest, truth be told, of enquiring any further.</p><p>By the time they arrive back at their house in Kalm, Shera has nearly forgotten what had bothered her so much about the dance, and she goes to bed thinking that in the morning, she’ll find out when that lecture on astronomy is, and ensuring her attendance.</p><hr/><p>‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, <em>fuck</em>!’</p><p>Tifa sits on the bar, legs swinging as Cid paces back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, hands yanking at his hair and scrubbing his face. He’s smoked four cigarettes, and it’s almost dawn.</p><p>It had been hours before they left the dance, among some of the last to leave. Aerith had been happy to drag Zack and Cloud around, and Tifa had been asked to dance a handful of times. Cid had disappeared not long after his dance with Miss Shera, and when he finally returned, he’d had a face like thunder, and refused to talk about his grievances, whatever they were.</p><p>So by the time they made it back to <em>Seventh Heaven</em>, which Tifa agrees is a terrible name for an establishment, but she had not had the luxury of choosing it, the good Captain had been positively wretched, bordering on distraught.</p><p>‘Are you going to talk to me about it, or am I going to have to sit here for another half an hour?’ Tifa asks.</p><p>‘Nobody’s asking you to sit there,’ Cid snipes, and then whirls to pace back the other way. ‘You can fuck off.’</p><p>‘Do you want a drink?’ she asks, gestures at the bottles behind her.</p><p>‘Have I ever drunk that shit?’ Cid asks in reply, and then, ‘no slight meant, of course.’</p><p>‘None taken, sir,’ she replies, wry. ‘I just don’t know what bee has found itself in your bonnet to be able to offer you advice you’ll no doubt ignore.’</p><p>‘If I wanted your advice, I’d ask,’ Cid tells her, which just furthers her point. ‘I – I.’</p><p>He stops in the middle of the room, puts his hands over his mouth, inhales the stale smell of cigarettes that he exhales, and closes his eyes with a low groan.</p><p>‘Oh,’ Tifa says, because Tifa simply cannot be an idiot for more than five seconds. ‘Oh, Cid.’</p><p>‘Shut your fucking mouth,’ he replies, more force of habit than any real vitriol. ‘Don’t you fucking <em>dare</em>.’</p><p>She shuts her mouth for a moment, slips off the bar and dusts her skirt down before striding across the space between them to take his hands and tug them away from his mouth. They stare at each other for a second, two, three, and then Cid screws his eyes shut, his jaw clenching. He swallows, opens his eyes again, finds Tifa looking at him with such gentleness that it makes him sick.</p><p>‘I don’t even know her name,’ he scoffs, with a pitch to his voice that almost sounds hysterical. ‘Her family name. I – I don’t know who she is, or where she’s staying, or who she’s staying with, or whether I’m just – wasting my time even wondering any of this shit.’</p><p>Tifa is still holding his wrists, her grip gentle, soft, firm enough to ground him. Such a flyaway of a boy, his mother said, prone to flitting about and never staying still for as long as it took to cut his hair. That he’s managed to maintain a good enough friendship with Tifa that she puts him up for the season year after year is a miracle he cannot thank the planet for enough. She holds him like she’s expecting him to start pacing again; his feet shuffle, in his boots, his toes curling.</p><p>‘I did,’ she starts, her brow creasing for a moment. ‘I did wonder, when Aerith introduced her. She didn’t – she didn’t give a family name, and that’s so – that’s unlike Aerith, to not have all the facts.’</p><p>‘You think she’s hiding it? Why would she hide it?’</p><p>‘I don’t think she knows,’ Tifa replies, still with that crease in her brow, and then again, slower, ‘I don’t think she knows. If she knew, she’d have told us, and if she’d tried to hide it, she’d have had a tell, she’s a shit liar. Oh, for – terrible. She’s a terrible liar. Just as you’re a terrible influence.’</p><p>His lips quirk for a heartbeat, and then his frown returns. He feels so fucking young; he’s thirty-fucking-two, he is a grown man. He should not be undone by a slip of a girl looking at him with eyes like – like – like sunlight in the trees.</p><p>‘It doesn’t matter,’ he shrugs, straightening himself up, like it matters at all that he has a reputation to uphold. ‘I’m not in the market for a wife, and I have every fucking intention of letting the name die with me, so that’s that. It doesn’t matter. If I see her again, I’ll – she likes her tea with milk and one sugar, and if that comes up, I’ll remember it, but otherwise, it doesn’t fucking matter. I have enough to get on with, what with you and Vincent and the fucking brat.’</p><p>Tifa huffs out a laugh, and finally lets go of his wrists, holds his face in both hands.</p><p>‘You’re an idiot, Captain Highwind,’ she tells him, fond. ‘But you’re worrying over nothing. You’ll see her again, no doubt.’</p><p>Cid takes a deep breath, exhales it onto his feet so that she doesn’t get the stale smoke still in his mouth.</p><p>‘Thanks, Tifa,’ he says, quiet.</p><p>‘You’re welcome.’</p><hr/><p>He feels like shit, but that’ll be because he had only two hours sleep, and he only has himself to blame. He dresses in sensible clothes, not the pompous shit they force him to wear for dances, and he goes down to find Aerith barefoot and sat at the bar, eating oats.</p><p>‘Where’s your man?’ Cid asks, which is the worst thing he could have done.</p><p>He could have just walked straight past her and to the door and out into the wilderness that is Midgar first thing in the morning, but <em>no</em>. He had to open his mouth.</p><p>Idiot.</p><p>‘He’s working,’ Aerith replies, and then she puts down her spoon, swivels on her stool to look at him.</p><p>He looks back at her.</p><p>‘Cid,’ she says.</p><p>‘Fuck off,’ he replies, but leans against the counter with his arms folded and his expression terse.</p><p>‘What did you think?’ she asks, ‘of your Miss Shera? She danced wonderfully.’</p><p>‘I’m surprised you were watching.’</p><p>He’s not surprised at all; of course she was watching. She likes to think herself a matchmaker, but she’s just a troublemaker.</p><p>‘You liked her, then? I’m glad.’</p><p>She says it with such sincerity too, almost as if she wants him to believe it.</p><p>‘What are you after?’ he asks.</p><p>‘Her last name,’ she says, and pouts. ‘She hasn’t told me, and I can’t just <em>ask</em> Mrs Wright, or my mother.’</p><p>Cid frowns at her. Aerith, refusing to stick her nose in other people’s business? Refusing to take the direct route?</p><p>‘The fuck’s wrong with you?’ he asks, ‘are you sick?’ His eyebrows climb and his jaw drops, and she puffs up before the next word’s out of his mouth. ‘Pregnant?’</p><p> She squawks like a bird and flaps her hands at him. ‘No!’ she crows, too loud for the emptiness of the bar, and it echoes off the glasses. ‘No,’ she repeats, quieter, ‘no, I am <em>not</em>.’</p><p>He relaxes; he was teasing. Mostly. He knows that she’s been in some rather compromising positions with that man of hers, and the news wouldn’t be a surprise. But it would be a scandal, and not one he thinks his chequebook could cover.</p><p>‘Fine,’ he says, ‘but you’re not going to interfere? You like meddling.’</p><p>Aerith purses her lips at him before turning back to her oats. ‘No,’ she murmurs, and stirs a pattern into the bowl. ‘No, there’s – something about her. I don’t – I don’t normally feel it’s my place to meddle, but she’s. She’s very sad.’</p><p>‘Her sister’s dead,’ Cid offers, ‘this is her first season. She’d always thought her sister would be with her.’</p><p>‘Oh,’ Aerith hums. ‘I suppose that makes sense. Either way, I – I want you to be happy, and I don’t think me making a lot of noise around her is going to help.’</p><p>Cid frowns at her ear, but she doesn’t turn to look at him, and doesn’t say anything more. The conversation apparently over, he walks past her towards the door, smoothing a hand over her crown as he passes.</p><p>‘Cid?’ she calls, when he reaches the door.</p><p>He glances back.</p><p>‘You will be happy, won’t you?’</p><p>‘You talk like you won’t be here to see it,’ he snorts, ‘don’t do that. You’re going to outlive us all, just to keep our graves full of flowers.’</p><p>The door swings shut behind him, and he doesn’t hear any response she has.</p><hr/><p>Shera lies in the bath in the morning, staring at the ceiling and pondering about the dance. She feels like she’s barely slept, though in truth she’s slept better than she has since she arrived. Mr Wright had been gone by the time she pulled herself out of bed, and Mrs Wright had been more interested in answering missives than hurrying Shera, so she took the opportunity to take a bath, and is glad of it. Her feet are sore, despite the shortness of the evening, and she’s grateful for the time to herself.</p><p>‘Captain Highwind,’ she murmurs to herself, though there’s not much else to accompany this declaration to the paint.</p><p>He was rude, certainly, and uncouth, and though of rank, he didn’t hold himself as such. He felt very – very – real. She supposes this might just be because she’s not used to people of any sort of rank not noble, and therefore he could very well be holding himself appropriately.</p><p>She doesn’t think the bad language and the cigarettes were appropriate.</p><p>He’d talked of a lecture on Tuesday, about the stars, and she supposes she must take a walk into the square to find the schedule, so that she knows what time to be there. And if she’s there, she might as well see what other lectures are on. She has no idea what girls spend their time doing on a day-to-day basis during the season, besides preparing for the next ball and discussing the previous. And she has such limited connections that there are few people to talk to, though, she admits to herself, that even if she had connections, she wouldn’t wish to discuss the happenings of the previous night.</p><p>That moment, on the terrace with the Captain, talking about everything and nothing, it felt so very private. She would be loath to discuss it with even Mrs Wright.</p><p>She heaves a sigh, and sinks lower in the tub, up to her chin, looking at her toes peeking out above the waterline. She’ll soak a while longer, and when she’s ready, she’ll go into Midgar and find the lecture hall.</p><hr/><p>She’s stood outside, reading the pamphlet she’d gotten from the desk with the schedule of lectures, when a shadow falls across her.</p><p>‘You’re my Aerith’s friend, right?’</p><p>Blinking and taking a reflexive step back, Shera peers up at the shadow’s origin, and wracks her brain for a name.</p><p>‘Mr Fair,’ she says, and plasters a smile across her face, inclines her head. ‘It is – nice – to see you.’</p><p>She scans the nearby area for any hint of Miss Aerith, but she is nowhere to be seen.</p><p>Mr Fair sees her looking. ‘I’m on my way to fetch her,’ he says, ‘she’s been at Tifa’s bar all morning, but I promised I’d take her to the woodworker’s after lunch, so she could choose some wood for her barrow.’</p><p>‘Barrow?’</p><p>Mr Fair shrugs.</p><p>‘She wanted one, and who would I be if I did not provide?’</p><p>He looks besotted, pleased to simply <em>be</em>, and she envies that.</p><p>‘I did not know you served,’ she says, gestures at his uniform.</p><p>His smile looks a little more strained. ‘I – there is more to me than the war,’ he tells her, and there’s something sad in his tone, so she says no more of it.</p><p>For a moment, there’s silence. He runs his hands through his hair, and then waves a hand at the pamphlet in her hands.</p><p>‘You’re looking at attending talks?’ he asks, and then gestures, as if to ask her to walk with him.</p><p>Casting another look about them, but seeing nobody looking at them, or anybody she recognises, Shera adjusts her bonnet and turns to walk alongside him.</p><p>‘Back home, all I did was read,’ she admits, ‘and I’ve very nearly run out of things to read, but I’m not done learning. There are some very interesting lectures in the next few days.’ She gauges his expression, and then says, ‘I wouldn’t be happy to fill my time with just dancing.’</p><p>At this, he laughs, loud and genuine. ‘I hear that!’ he chortles. ‘If I never attend another dance, it’ll be too soon. But – ah, my Aerith does like to dance.’</p><p>‘She’s a very graceful dancer.’</p><p>Mr Fair snorts. ‘Don’t let her hear you say that. She’s got enough of an ego.’</p><p>Shera laughs at that, because she can’t imagine Miss Aerith to be vain at all. They walk in peaceful silence for a few moments, Mr Fair looking all about him as if enamoured of the world, Shera alternating between her feet and the pamphlet, looking for the lecture on Tuesday about the stars.</p><p>‘Say,’ Mr Fair starts, and then hesitates. ‘What did you think of the Captain?’</p><p>‘He’s,’ Shera starts, and then stops. ‘He’s a good man.’</p><p>Mr Fair snorts. ‘He’ll hate to hear it. He – you danced very well together.’</p><p>Shera tries not to smile, but she can’t help herself.</p><p>‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘that was my first real dance. I don’t suppose the dances at home count all that much.’</p><p>‘You’d never know it,’ Mr Fair says, politely enough. ‘You danced well, and you made an impression on him.’</p><p>Shera trips over a step, and something clenches in her throat.</p><p>‘Impression?’ she echoes.</p><p>Mr Fair hums. ‘Indeed! He talked about you for most of the evening. Well, in the Captain’s way. He mentioned you once, and then didn’t talk at all for the rest of the night. Not to us, anyway. He got into an argument with one of the Prince’s men, but he always gets into arguments with Palmer, so we just. Ignore it.’</p><p>She stares at him.</p><p>‘He can do that?’ she asks.</p><p>‘Nobody’s stopped him yet,’ Mr Fair shrugs.</p><p>They lapse back into silence and walk along a busy street, Mr Fair idly looking in all of the windows they pass, and Shera looking the other direction, across the street to all the walkers going the same and opposite direction. How wildly different everyone seems for the tailcoats and spencers that adorn their shoulders. The ladies with their bonnets and the men with their neatly-clipped hair. She feels, somehow, that she does not fit, and finds herself knotting her fingers, picking at her nails as she does.</p><p>‘Oh,’ Mr Fair says, and his hands spread apologetically, ‘I’m so sorry, Miss. I’ve taken you miles out of your way for no reason at all! Please, don’t let me keep you.’</p><p>She’s not miles out of her way; she thinks she can find her way back to the square, and from there a suitably sensible tearoom.</p><p>‘You don’t need to apologise,’ she smiles, and there’s redness in the tips of his ears when he tips his head to her and trots off down the path.</p><p>She watches him go, and then sighs and turns back to return to the square. She’s sure they only took one left, which would be a right from this side.</p><p>Her path is impeded, almost immediately, by an unfortunately-familiar face.</p><p>‘Ah,’ says the – the – the <em>man</em> – from the bookshop. Not the Captain, because that would be too fortunate, but the one he’d had the – the – altercation with.</p><p>‘Ah,’ Shera echoes, and holds the pamphlet as a barrier, much as she had the book.</p><p>The man looks about them, behind her and behind himself, and across the street. Seeing nothing, or no one, a smile spreads across his face.</p><p>‘No Captain here to save you this time,’ he says, voice low.</p><p>Shera bites the back of her lip, squares her shoulders. This is a public street, busy enough. She’d only have to raise her voice.</p><p>‘You have not been introduced to me,’ she says, ‘and so I cannot speak to you. Good day, sir.’</p><p>She aims to shoulder past him – rude, certainly, but not without provocation, but he catches her arm before she’s even in line with him. His mouth is very hot against her ear, and her heart kicks in her chest.</p><p>‘You don’t need introductions,’ he tells her, ‘to get to know someone personally.’</p><p>She yanks her arm, but can’t pull it free.</p><p>‘Let go of me,’ she says, quiet. She aims for calm, but she knows she’s missed by the tremor in the last sound.</p><p>The man does not.</p><p>‘I know a man who’d be very delighted to make your acquaintance,’ he says, ‘and he could end your season very quickly for you. You seem – uncomfortable, here. He could take that discomfort away.’</p><p>Something curls in her belly, some bile or poison. Her fist clenches the pamphlet into creases.</p><p>‘Let go of me,’ she repeats, but she’s shakier than before.</p><p>‘Ah!’ calls another voice, ‘Planets above, I’ve been looking for you!’</p><p>They’re both startled by a pair of dainty hands grasping Shera’s elbow tight.</p><p>‘You weren’t at the tearoom, I should have <em>known</em> you’d get lost!’</p><p>Shera stares, and the girl holding her arm stares back, something wild in her eyes. Her knuckles are white about Shera’s arm, and it hurts, the grip she’s got.</p><p>‘What?’ the man says.</p><p>‘I have to thank you,’ the girl says, and Shera can’t stop staring.</p><p>She’s half the size of her, but her energy is so big, so loud, and she’s – she’s surprised that a Wutaian would not only be in Midgar, but to be so brazen about her heritage, too! She’s never seen robes like the ones she’s wearing, oversized and layered beyond anything she could imagine any of the Midgar elders would wear, but they suit her small frame, bulk her out in a way that could be beautiful.</p><p>‘Thank me?’ the man asks.</p><p>‘If you hadn’t bumped into this lamb like you did, you wouldn’t have stopped her long enough for me to spot her! And then I’d have spent another hour or more combing the streets and we’d be passing each other like ships in the night! Honestly, I think when the season opens, they should present all newcomers with a map, just so that they don’t get lost so easily!’</p><p> She’s talking faster and pulling, gently, enough that Shera has to take a step to keep her balance. The man, blinking and unsure how to proceed, lets go. The girl tugs again, takes a step forward at the same time, so that Shera is half a step behind her.</p><p>‘Thanks again,’ she says, and stands there with the imperiousness of one who has finished the conversation and has no desire to contemplate continuing it.</p><p>The man gives Shera one last look, head-to-toe and back again, and skulks off into the crowd.</p><p>‘Fuck <em>me!</em>’ the girl exclaims, her shoulders curling in and the rod in her spine softening.</p><p>Shera gapes at her.</p><p>‘Sorry,’ the girl says, and lets go of Shera’s arm, ‘you looked worried, I thought I’d better – well, you take care now!’</p><p>She makes to leave, but Shera lunges after her, catches her sleeve.</p><p>‘Wait,’ she says, ‘wait. You – I don’t – you can’t just – ‘</p><p>‘Sure I can,’ the girl snorts. ‘I can do whatever I want, and what’s anyone going to do? Start another war with my father? Not likely. Besides, the way Cid was going on about that girl in the bookshop, you’d think he.’</p><p>She stops dead, and stares at Shera. Shera can feel the heat in her cheeks and ears and neck, and does her best to hold her gaze. The girl looks her up, and down, and back up again.</p><p>‘Brown hair, brown eyes, yellow dress. Well, colour me impressed with the planet’s idea of a good time! You’re Miss Shera.’</p><p>Shera blinks at her. The girl grins back, her hands fisted against her hips and her heels rocking.</p><p>‘Of <em>course</em> it’s you! Of course, of all the days I leave that oaf behind is the day I meet the first woman to turn his head!’</p><p>Shera doesn’t know how to answer that, so she doesn’t. Instead, she says, ‘we haven’t been introduced.’</p><p>To which, the girl sticks out her hand, grin wide, and says, ‘Yuffie Kisaragi. Don’t bother introducing yourself, I’ve heard your name enough.’</p><p>Shera stares at her, so Miss Kisaragi closes the gap and grasps Shera’s hand, gives it a couple of good shakes before letting go.</p><p>‘Come on,’ she says, ‘I’ll walk you back to the square so you can be safe – safer, anyway. People don’t try that shit in the square.’</p><p>Shera, unable to say anything in response, just follows after her, and silently thinks to herself that she’s not coming back to town unaccompanied again.</p>
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